Page 40 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

He is desperate to say the right thing. He’s wearing the expression that he always gets when he is frightened that he’s about to fuck up and say something which will haunt us for the rest of our lives. He wants to ask what I want to do. Whether I want to keep it. But he’s worried that the way he asks the question will bely a preference about the answer.

‘I’ve been better,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to do it.’

He nods, and says the only sensible thing a man can say in this situation. ‘It’s your choice. Whatever you want to do, I’ve got you.’

Five days later I have an appointment at a clinic in Warren Street. We ignore a busker playing a Christmas song outside the Tube, and push our way past a couple of religious nutters on the way in. I am relieved that the waiting room isn’t full of weeping teenagers. It’s mostly couples, some a little younger than us, some a little older. I’m given pills. We get a taxi home, which we absolutely cannot afford, and then we wait. Jack makes me chicken nuggets and spaghetti hoops, which makes me cry. We watchThe Secret Garden.

There is more blood than I was expecting. It’s so early that I thought it would just be like a period, but it isn’t. Not at all. For a while I lie on the floor of the bathroom, curled up because it’s not big enough to extend my legs. The cold of the tiled floor feels good underneath me, easing the nausea. Jack stands in the doorway watching me and saying nothing, which is preferable because I don’t want to talk about it. I read online that I’d know when it was over, and it turns out that’s true. Eventually it is, so we go to bed. He holds me and I wake up awash with relief, knowing I have made the right choice.

The weeks pass, the bleeding stops, and we go back to our normal lives. I fill Tupperware with leftovers and we take the Tube to work. He stacks the dishwasher, I empty it. We finally start watchingGame of Thrones, which everyone has raved about; we go to the pub and hang out at Tom and Grace’s house and just sort of get on with it. With one pretty major difference. We can barely bring ourselves to touch each other. I get into bed each night wearing pyjamas which cover me from ankle to wrist. I put a pillow between us. When, half asleep, I roll over and run my hand alonghis torso, under his T-shirt, he flinches. We are terrified of what our bodies did. Terrified it will happen again, despite the fact that I had an implant put in my arm to remove any risk of forgetting to take the pill ever again.

Eventually Valentine’s Day rolls around. We try to ignore it. The date pisses me off every time I see it because it reminds me how much time has passed. I want to shout, ‘Yes, I know, it’s the middle of February and I haven’t had sex since before Christmas, I fucking GET IT.’ I buy Jack a card because I always have done, but it takes me ages to choose one which feels even close to right. Our messages to each other are half-hearted. On the morning of the fourteenth, I get a surge of determination and I put a bottle of champagne on my credit card, then when Jack gets home we drink it and watch moreGame of Thrones. During a particularly violent beheading, I feel briefly better, but it’s all too brief and before I know it it’s a sex scene. A really long, really naked sex scene. And the atmosphere is like I’m watching it with my dad. I want to go and make a cup of tea.

‘Right,’ I say, as the woman on the screen orgasms, and the atmosphere between us becomes unbearable. ‘This is mad.’

Jack turns his body to face mine. ‘I know. I know! I was just sitting there thinking that I’d actually rather be watching this with my parents.’

‘Me too!’ I say. ‘Thank fuck for that.’

I refill both our glasses with the champagne, which isn’t properly cold anymore.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know,’ he replies, dropping his eyes. ‘Well. I mean. I do sort of know.’

‘Is it the abortion thing?’ I ask.

Jack looks guilty. ‘I’m just so scared of it happening again. I know it’s not going to. But I am. And, I don’t know. It’s pathetic, but it was so horrible for you. And it was my fault.’

‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

He looks unconvinced.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Then it was both of our faults.’

Mollified, he puts his hand on my thigh. ‘The more we didn’t have sex, the more I felt like we shouldn’t have sex, and then I sort of thought that we should, but the last thing I wanted was to pressure you.’

‘I get it,’ I say. ‘I felt the same.’

We both look across the tiny flat, to the door of our bedroom which opens directly into the living room. It’s like it’s goading us.

‘This isn’t going to be very sexy,’ I say, ‘but I’m going to make a suggestion.’

‘Hit me.’

‘I think we go to our room, and we make out like teenagers for five minutes. And if we don’t feel like shagging once we’ve done that, we call it a night, and try again another time.’

He smiles, stands up and offers me his hand. I feel consumed with disappointment that he’s agreed to my suggestion because I don’t want to take my clothes off. I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to repeat the stupid act which got me into this shitty miserable place. But I’ve said it now. So I follow him to the bedroom, and we lie down. He runs his hand under my top, along my spine, kisses my neck and twists his hand in my hair, just firmly enough that it’s sharp but not enough to hurt me. I gently bite into his lip. He smells right, he feels right, he knows exactly what to do, how to trace the skin at the side of my breasts to make me whimper. We’re good at this. We like this. This is not a bad idea.

Five minutes later the timer goes off on his phone, sharp and loud. I reach over and silence it, one thigh either side of his torso, our clothes twisted on the floor. We don’t call it a night.

Jack

My smugness from winning at Mr and Mrs (Suze had to tell us four times that there were no winners) is short-lived, because it’s almost time for the ‘intimacy workshop’. If there was one part of this weekend which I have been actively dreading, it’s this. The intimacy rule, where we moot that you have to make space for sex and intimacy even when it doesn’t feel wholly natural.

I didn’t really want to talk about sex in the book at all. Maybe I read too much John le Carré as a teenager, but I’ve always taken the view that sex rarely comes over well in writing, so it’s best avoided. Obviously the publishers didn’t like that view, and once Clay got into Jessica’s head and convinced her that the book needed a chapter on sex, I left it to her to write. Jessica begins the chapter by talking about going to the gym – you often think you’re not in the mood, but once you’ve got your trainers on and you’re pounding the treadmill, you’re glad to be there. Sex, she tells our readers, is much the same. Give it five minutes of foreplay and if you’re not in the mood, park it for today and try again tomorrow, or next time you both feel like it. In fairness to her, it’s very good advice that we’ve benefitted from in the past. But we were still worried it might comeacross like we were telling people to force it. Aside from a very small handful of blue-haired teenagers online, no one took it this way, and it’s the piece of advice which we are most often complimented on by couples who have kids, as it’s helped them make time for each other. But it was always going to be a difficult rule to bring into the retreat. I suggested we just give people the night off and put a ‘do not disturb’ sign on their rooms, and a nice bed and time away from their real lives would probably be enough.

Eventually, after a lot of agonising over what an appropriate activity might be, Jessica and the team settled on a massage workshop. The idea was to focus on the physical-intimacy side of things, rather than sex, reminding people that if their sex life isn’t panning out, then it’s better to get some skin-to-skin contact in place and then worry about the actual shagging later. I know it’s a good concept, but I was then, and remain now, very unconvinced that all of us taking off our clothes and rubbing each other in the same room is a good idea. The itinerary for this evening reads: ‘A light vegan or vegetarian meal, with a variety of alcohol-free cocktails, followed by a massage workshop led by a local healer.’

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